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IoT + Mobile Hackathon

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Today we are hosting the IoT + Mobile Hackathon with PubNub at their office on Folsom Street in San Francisco.

Over 50 developers and hackers have turned up to start building some great projects in just one day. Hackers have from 10am until 8pm to build their projects and present them, with over $3000 of potentials prizes to be won.

We are judging today’s projects based on their innovation, fun-ness, and most commercially viable. There is also a Least Useful prize. The grand prize it the priceless opportunity to present at the IoT Stream Conference on April 23rd, just before the keynote speaker on the day.

Christian and Jordan from Sinch are here, and so was Dave from PubNub to help along the way.

After some presentations from Sinch and PubNub, and an introduction to Tessel, the teams are ready to go and start building their projects.

Jordan from Sinch has also brought her famous Drummer the Dog for some entertainment during the day.

After 10 hours of hacking – 8:04pm

It’s just after 8pm here in San Francisco and after 10 hours of hacking, are teams are finished building and putting together their presentations. It’s been a great afternoon of coding, pizza, and Drummer the Dog, and we can’t wait to see what comes out at the presentations.

Two factor authentication for your home in real time. Using a phone number, friends and homeowners could call the front door to have it open and close, using Sinch to power the voice calling and SMS messages.

An interactive toy which makes sounds and sends messages to their parents. A fun toy that mixes movements with sounds as part of a learning experience.

6. EV

A way of using Tessel devices to transform alerts for the disabled. EV could be added onto an quiet electric car, so when driving near people with hearing difficulties, they can be alerted with a notification.

7. TayTay Button
A platform for button based applications, and fully customizable IoT devices that let users build button-action processes. Using PubNub for real time data streaming, TayTay then added Sinch to send SMS alerts to users, and our new text-to-speech feature to call users, all based on the press of a button.

8. Pet Nanny
A tool for pet lovers that helps keep pets entertained during the day when the owner is out. Using an IoT device that dangles a toy above your pet, this is a great way to prevent pets from feeling restless or lonely when you are out of the house.

9. Chain Text Curse
“We took the chain letter…and made it worse”. Users that receive a chain letter in SMS, and need to add 3 phone numbers to get rid of the chain letter curse. If users ignore the text and don’t add 3 numbers, they are reminded every 5 minutes until they do.

10. Chorify
Gameify chores and users can be rewarded for keeping their space clean. One of the ways Chorify works is by using a Tessel camera to compare a picture of a clean space (desk/room/etc) with the current space and judget if it is clean or messy.

11. Closer
Closer hopes to provide people with an easy way of knowing where are the things they most care about in real time.

12 Plant Analytics
Taking care of plants is hard. With plant analytics, it’s easy. Using a Tessel for data tracking (such as humidity, temperature, level of sunlight, etc) and a simple iOS app to present the data, Plant Analytics aims to make it easier to understand plants and know what they need, when they need it.

13. Plater
License Plate Readers have helped capture criminals, made business profitable and so much more. But these devices are often too expensive to buy outright. Plater is an affordable, easy to use license plate reader and tracker for under $100 using the Tessel camera module.

14. YodaZone
YodaZone aims to reduce stress in the workplace by tracking user stress levels and providing real time dashboards to alter users when they are above a good stress threshold.

The Awards – 10:23pm

PubNub Most Commercially Viable and Grand Prize – Baby Talk

Useless Prize – Chain Letter Curse

Most Fun Sinch App – Baby Talk

Most Innovated use of Sinch – OpenSesame

Best Hack – Uvi

Most Innovative PubNub App – TayTay Button

Thanks to everyone who came and hacked today. We hope you had a great time and we are also happy to announce that together with PubNub, the money we raised today is being donated to the San Francisco HIV & AIDs support group, and we have raised over $1000 for them, so thanks for your help!

Can’t wait to see you at our next event! Stay tuned on the Sinch blog!

Thanks from Jordan, Christian, and Daniel.

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